


The Time Bubble

by JerusalemStrayCat



Series: Adventurestuck [1]
Category: Adventure Time, Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Arson, Background Kurloz Makara, Bro and Mom are their parents, Demonic Possession, Dirk and Dave are brothers, Episode: s05e01 Finn the Human Part 1, Episode: s05e02 Finn the Human Part 2, Gen, Organized Crime, Time Shenanigans, but not more than AT or HS canon though, gets a little gruesome at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-18 09:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21508654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JerusalemStrayCat/pseuds/JerusalemStrayCat
Summary: Dirk the Human spoke slowly and deliberately. "I wish that Lord English never existed," he said.And just like that, he was gone.Dave and Dirk are the only human beings on the continent as of around five years ago, and the only living creatures on the planet as of around five minutes ago. A single carefully phrased wish can salvage their world and change the whole of history, but will it be for the better?(Adventurestuck AU.)
Relationships: Aradia Megido & Dave Strider, Dave Strider & Dirk Strider
Series: Adventurestuck [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550785
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	1. Dirk the Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a boy, desperate to stave off the end, hastens it instead.

“Dirk?”

A woman’s voice was the only sound that could be heard in the still afternoon other than gently rustling leaves. The boy sitting on the grass absently tapped out a beat on a nearby log, seemingly oblivious.

“Dirk!”

The call came again, louder this time. The boy, Dirk, lifted his head toward the origin of the sound and sighed. “Coming, Mom!” he shouted. He made no move to get up.

“Dude. C’mon.”

Dirk jumped in surprise at the second voice, which came from the vicinity of his right ear, followed by a poke in the ribs. His younger brother had crept up beside him, evidently using the stealth techniques Dirk had taught him. His anxious expression could not be hidden by the pointed sunglasses on his face, which matched Dirk’s own but for the lack of red lights in the lenses.

“Hey Dave,” said Dirk. “Did Mom send you to get me?”

“Yeah. She says it’s super important. You better come back to the house.”

~

The apartment that Dave and Dirk called home was on the top floor of their building. All the floors below were uninhabited, the apartments fallen prey to vermin and structural damage long ago. The top floor was well on its way to meeting the same fate. One long rickety elevator ride later, the brothers made their way to the door at the end of the hall. Before Dirk could retrieve his key, the door swung open.

Roxanne Strider stood in the doorway. She did not look her usual stately self at all. Her pale hair hung limply around her pale face, which was shadowed and lined with worry. She watched as her sons entered the apartment, then closed the door and collapsed on a kitchen chair, head in her hands.

“Mom? What’s wrong? Where’s Dad?” Dirk and Dave spoke over each other as they rushed to her side.

“Dirk, I need you to do something for me. It’s very important,” said Roxanne. She took a deep breath, then continued. “I need you to sell the Auto-Responder.”

For a moment, Dirk was at a loss for words. Though he was only sixteen, he was the best engineer for miles around, responsible for some of the most advanced feats of robotics since the Hilarocaust over four hundred years ago. He personally kept every machine in town operational, from the elevator in his own building to the huge clock in the central square, but his crown jewel was the Auto-Responder. It was the only fully operational AI left in the known world, in a device compact enough to fit in his sunglasses. Not only that, but it was the closest thing he had (after Dave, of course) to a friend.

“W-what?” he stammered. “Sell the AR? But he’s - it’s my best work. And we need it. I need it.”

“Please, Dirk, just do as I say.”

“Is it the Crew again? I can offer them my services instead. I’m sure they need a techie to do their dirty work.”

“The Crew has informed me that they already have an engineer,” Roxanne said. “They want money. Just go.”

Dirk opened his mouth to argue further, but nothing came out. He was almost grateful for the commotion that drifted from the ground floor, an excuse to leave and investigate. The brothers rode the elevator down in silence, unusual for both of them.

Upon reaching the ground floor, Dirk and Dave found their way blocked by a pair of suit-wearing mobsters, one tall and thin, the other short and stout. The insignias on their jackets marked them as senior members of the Midnight Crew.

"Well?" said the tall one, who had a small red diamond on his lapel.

"Well what?" countered Dave.

"He's asking if you two twerps have our money," said the short one, who had a gray club on his oversized hat.

"Your father did a considerable amount of damage to our base. Admirable as his bravery may be, it is in your best interest, as well as his, to  _ not _ follow in his footsteps." The tall mobster, presumably the infamous mastermind Diamonds Droog, retrieved a small screen from his jacket and tapped a few buttons. Dirk and Dave bent over to look.

The screen showed a dark room, the only light coming from a window looking over the town. The Striders' apartment building was barely visible on the horizon.

"This is in your mansion," Dirk said.

"Right you are, kid," said the short mobster, who could only be Clubs Deuce, the Crew's mercurial demolitions expert. "But keep watching. I think you'll want to see what comes next!"

The camera panned away from the window. On the other side of the room, an enormous muscular man held a struggling Dirk Strider Senior in a bear hug. Dirk Senior was not a small person, but he almost disappeared into the other man's bulk. His hat was intact, but his pointed shades were askew and his katana was snapped in half on the floor.

"Soooo..." Deuce sing-songed, seemingly delighting in the shock on the boys' faces. "How about it? You gonna pony up?"

"You have until midnight," Droog said, giving a printed list to Dirk. "Follow these instructions to the letter. Do not fail the Crew."

"Take care, boys!" Deuce waved one last time before leaving the building on Droog's heels, leaving Dirk and Dave alone in the lobby.

They stood there in silence for several moments.

"Well," said Dirk in an uncharacteristically hollow voice. "We better get started. It's already afternoon."

"You're not seriously considering actually selling AR, are you?" said Dave. "We should just break Dad out and help him kick the Crew's collective ass. Don't you have a plan? You always have a plan."

"Ordinarily, I would," said Dirk, eyes still fixed on the list of instructions Droog gave him, “but I've seen the Crew's mansion. Its security is on a level I've never encountered. I'm sorry, AR," he continued, addressing his shades. He gently touched a fingertip to one of the lenses, right at the edge of the red light. "The Crew has reached new levels of cruelty if it's come to this.”

"Can he hear you?"

"No. I haven't had the time or resources to give him a camera or microphone. He only knows what I text him."

"So he doesn't..." Dave trailed off, reluctant to accept the implications of what Dirk had just said.

"No," Dirk said again. "AR doesn't know. Yet. If we find any takers, then I'll tell him."

They continued walking slowly toward the town.

“I hope someone around here likes your personality enough to want an AI coded with your memories and speech patterns,” said Dave, once they reached the first houses on the outskirts. “Maybe they’ll like you enough to let you visit him sometimes.”

“Unlikely.”

“Who knows? There's probably a ton of people around here would love a snarky jackass like you to debate philosophy with or something. Or maybe AR will be able to annoy them so much that they give him back for cheap. Maybe by then this whole Midnight Crew thing will have blown over.”

“Dude, shut up. All you’re doing is making both of us feel even worse, and you know it.”

“Sorry, I'm just agitated. You know I don't need much of an excuse to go off on-” Dave stopped dead mid-word.

“Dave? You good?”

Dave turned to Dirk, wide-eyed behind his shades. “This is where the scrap jet is,” he said softly. “Remember?”

“It’s here? I thought it was farther down.”

“Nope.” Dave pointed straight ahead at a raised tree root. Below the root was a dark patch, easily mistakable for a shadow from afar, but at the distance Dave was standing, a cave entrance was clearly distinguishable. 

Dave slid down into the cave, then Dirk. A few yards down lay the mangled fuselage of an ancient, rusted cargo jet, old enough to be from the era of the Hilarocaust. Years ago, Dirk would scavenge scrap metal and machine parts for his projects from the jet. Then he found the scrap metal black market, where he could buy supplies that weren’t rusted into oblivion and could last more than a few weeks before falling apart. Even after years, the jet was still there, if slightly worse for wear.

“This thing is useless to us right now, but the fact that it’s still somewhat recognizable at all is a miracle,” Dave said.

“Speaking of miracles...” Dirk bent down to examine something buried under the plane. "You ever notice this thing here before?"

Dave squinted at where his brother pointed. Half-buried in the dirt was a piece of soft white fleece, bright and out of place against the dull metal of the jet and the darkness of the cave. He knelt and brushed away some of the dirt from the fabric, revealing a line of stitching. One sharp tug later, a whole puppet hand lay exposed on the dirt.

"The hell is this?" Dave muttered.

Dirk crouched next to him, laying the list of instructions on the ground, and together they slowly unearthed the rest of the puppet. It was soft and floppy, except for the head, which was carved out of wood like a ventriloquist's dummy. Its eyes were shut.

"It's creepy," Dave said in response to his own question.

"I think it looks cool," said Dirk. "Well-made, too. Maybe we could sell this instead of the AR."

"Are you insane? Do you see how much they're asking for?" Dave picked up the list and waved it in his brother's face. "There is no way you can sell this at all, much less for the price we need. We need to make bank, Dirk. Like a whole bank. Like the actual building. Straight up rip it out of the ground-"

"I'm serious. Look at how clean these stitches are. These clothes can probably fit a small child, and you know dyes in these colors haven't been made in centuries." Dirk indicated the purple of the doll's overshirt, the blue of the shirt underneath, the vibrant orange of its sleeves. "This is a pre-Hilarocaust artifact - over four hundred years old. It should be more than enough, if we find a collector."

"Dirk, please."

"I just have a feeling," Dirk said as he and Dave stood up. "Maybe you're right, but I think this could be the solution to our problems."

"Since when do you ever act based on  _ feelings _ you get? What's going on with you?"

“HOLD IT!”

The brothers jumped nearly a foot in the air at the sudden shout. The source of the shout revealed herself a moment later, tottering toward them from behind the jet. Her skin was grayish and wrinkled, her black hair long and wild, her left eye socket a mass of scar tissue. A shapeless blue coat concealed her body from the neck down.

“Uh. Who are you exactly?” Dave asked.

“I’m a thousand years old, and that puppet is MINE!” the old woman screeched, drawing an enormous blue sword from the depths of her coat and brandishing it about.

“Yeah, okay. We just need to borrow it for a bit, if that’s alright with you.” Dirk said as he inched toward the puppet, giving the glowing blade a wide berth.

“No! NO! It is magic! Terrible, evil magic. Far too dangerous for mortals like you to touch with your little grubby fingers. I have suffered you to pick apart this plane for way too long, but the puppet stays, for the good of the universe.” A faraway look appeared in the old woman’s eye as her voice adopted an almost reverent tone, though she didn’t lower her sword. “One thousand years ago, my beloved friend Kurloz Makara gave his life to save this foolish, unworthy planet from annihilation. This plane was transporting an ancient sarcophagus from its crumbling tomb, unaware that it contained the essence of the most terrible being in the universe. This being, if released, would bathe the world in candy-coated cherubic terror, but using his mastery of the chucklevoodoos and harshwhimsies, Kurloz summoned meteors from the sky, putting the fear of the Messiahs into the pilot, crashing the plane, and foiling the monster's blasphemous plot. But he alone was not saved, as he perished under the great fiery weight of this very plane, where his skeleton remains to this day, as well as the sarcophagus. The puppet, grieving its lost master, released a wave of magic so powerful that it put all of humanity into psychic stasis for four hundred boring years.”

“Yeah, no way any of that is true,” said Dave. “Magic is fake. Dad says false prophets used to control the people with cheap parlor tricks.”

“And to get babes,” Dirk added, having almost reached the jet. “Maybe ten or twelve babes each.”

“No!” the old woman insisted. “Magic is real!”

“Lady, you have been down in this cave way too long,” muttered Dirk, reaching for the puppet. “Let me just...”

“Step off, loser, or I’ll have to use this!” The old woman spun to face Dirk, narrowly missing Dave with the glowing sword.

“Quit it with that thing, lady!” Dave shouted once he recovered from the near-decapitation.

“Sorry, but now you must DIE!” As she shrieked the last word, the old woman stabbed Dirk squarely in the chest.

Dave let out a scream of surprise, which quickly died as he realized his brother was unhurt. An experimental poke revealed that the blade was no more than an extraordinarily realistic hologram.

“Dammit,” muttered the old woman.

Dirk shook his head wearily, then turned to Dave. “I’ll keep her busy,” he said.

Dave nodded and walked over to where the puppet lay. The old woman hissed like a wild animal and tried to grab him, but Dirk drew his (actual, physical, sharp as hell) sword and kept her at bay while Dave retrieved the puppet and made a beeline for the exit.

“Sorry, lady, gotta save my dad,” Dave called from the cave opening, puppet in hand.

“Destroy the world, more like,” the old woman sneered, watching the boys disappear into the late afternoon light. She glanced nervously at the wreck of the plane, as if the removal of the puppet would cause it to collapse.

"The puppet," growled a familiar low voice from beneath the plane. "Go get it."

"I know you're not really talking to me, Kurloz," the old woman grumbled. "I'm not crazy."

"Go get the puppet," the voice in her head repeated.

The old woman just huffed in reply.

"Get the puppet, Vriska!" the voice shouted.

"I can't. My knees," Vriska griped.

"I'm very disappointed, I must say," said the voice. "You're really letting me down here."

"Okay, all right," Vriska relented, turning to exit the cave. "Stupid clown."

~

"Creepy puppet for sale," Dave droned, halfheartedly waving the puppet at passersby. "Who wants a creepy puppet we found in a cave."

"Well, when you put it that way," Dirk said. "Who on earth could refuse such an offer? Please sir, shut up and take my money."

Marketgoers came and went, but after an hour and a half, only one stopped to take a closer look. He was a young man, hardly older than Dirk.

"I'll take it," he said.

"Sure," said Dave, double checking the instructions. "Cash only."

The young man's face fell. "Oh, I'm poor," he said. "But I can trade you a home concert. I mostly do covers, but I have originals too..."

"Cash only," Dave repeated. "Sorry, man."

"Ooh," said another voice from behind. "Lemme see that!"

Before Dave could answer, the puppet vanished from his hands, knocking Dirk's shades off his face. Dirk blinked from the sudden brightness.

"This is some find, boys!" chirped the thief, whose hat marked him as Clubs Deuce.

"Hey!" Dave shouted. "Give that back! I need to sell that thing to pay you guys!"

Deuce tossed the puppet to his large companion, who wore a red heart-shaped pin on his jacket. Dave recognized him as the man from the mansion who was restraining his father. "What do you think, Boxcars?" Deuce asked him. "Will the boss like it?"

"Why don't we ask him?" Boxcars said. He tossed the puppet to a rough-looking man slouching against a pole. What the man lacked in physical stature, he made up for with the sheer malice of his expression, amplified by the many scars crisscrossing his face and his eyepatch emblazoned with a spade. He caught the puppet deftly and grinned.

"What's this, Hearts?" he asked.

"Target practice, sir," Boxcars replied simply.

"You'd think I'd like to knife up this old piece of crap that can't even fight back?"

"Whatever you say, sir."

"That's right!" the man roared, stepping dangerously close to where Dirk's shades lay. "Whatever I, Spades Slick, say. And I say you're an idiot! I'm still keeping it, though!" Slick took out an impossibly small terrier from his jacket, put the puppet's overshirt and hat on it, and held it up for the crowd to see. The crowd applauded nervously.

Dave sighed and walked up to the three mobsters, scanning for an opening to grab Dirk's shades. "Okay, you guys," he said. "I know this wasn't what you asked for, but you have the puppet now before your stupid deadline, so leave my dad alone."

"Have you forgotten the rules of this town?" said Deuce. "If you find it lying around, it's property of Spades Slick and the Midnight Crew. You best remember, little bird, or you'll end up like your father."

"Fine, so maybe it wasn't really mine, but -"

"It's mine!" Vriska cut Dave off, winded from the walk from the cave. "I'm a demon!" she added once her breath returned. "Well, half-demon."

Slick shook his head. "Boxcars, shut the crazy lady up. Deuce, you can keep that machine thing, since you're the only one who might know what it is." Deuce gleefully retrieved Dirk's shades and stuck them under his comical hat. "Tough luck, birdie!" Slick called as he and Deuce disappeared into the shrubs, taking the puppet, the shades, and the last shreds of the brothers' hope with them.

"They took AR," Dirk said dumbly.

"We'll get him back, I promise," Dave assured him, carefully eyeing Boxcars. "But first..."

Boxcars lifted Vriska off the ground by the front of her coat. "End of the road, spider lady," he threatened.

"Ow, my old bones," Vriska replied.

Dave discreetly unsheathed Dirk's sword and crept up behind Boxcars. "Hey, ugly!" he shouted, stabbing at his ribs.

Boxcars dropped Vriska in surprise, blood leaking out of the gash in his side. It wasn't a very deep cut, as Dave had misjudged the position of Boxcars' body and had never held a sword in his life. Still, Boxcars retreated, growling.

One of the vendors in the market took the opportunity to throw some junk at the Crew member's head, and the rest of the bystanders followed suit. "We're sick of being bullied around!" shouted one of them.

"You're making a  _ big _ mistake!" Boxcars bellowed, then pointed one bloody finger at Dave. "Especially you, little bird!"

"My name is Dave Strider!" Dave yelled back. "And you tell Slick I'm coming for my stuff!"

"You come and try!" Boxcars retorted, already backing into the bushes.

Dave turned back to Vriska. "Are you okay, lady?" he asked.

"You..." Vriska coughed, still recovering from Boxcars' manhandling. "You must promise to return the puppet to its place."

"I promise. And you do too, don't you, Dirk?"

"Yeah, yeah," groaned Dirk, getting back on his feet. "We'll put the puppet back. Also, Dave, if you want any chance against Slick, you're going to leave the swordsmanship to me."

“Well  _ maybe _ if you had taught me how to fight with a sword instead of putting it off to my fourteenth birthday like an  _ idiot _ -”

“That’s Mom’s fault, not mine.”

Dave rolled his eyes theatrically and walked towards the bushes, trying to find the secret entrance to the Crew's mansion. Dirk started to follow him, then stopped. He turned to the path leading up to the door of the mansion itself.

"Wait," said Dave. "We should find a secret entrance, like the one around here. If you go in the front door, they'll see you."

"Maybe I want them to see me," said Dirk icily. His grip on his sword tightened. "Maybe I'm sick of living on their terms." His voice raised to a shout. "I'm going to go up there, and  _ show them my face! _ "

"Good luck, bro. You'll need it," said Dave, though Dirk had already stormed off.

~

The front door of the mansion was ajar, but Dirk kicked it open anyway. He did the same for every door he passed along the halls. Every room was empty. He moved warily through the deserted mansion, sword at the ready, becoming more suspicious by the moment.

After about ten minutes of skulking about and kicking doors, the stillness suddenly broke. At first, Dirk could only hear footsteps at the end of the hall, but then several men's voices became audible. The voices grew more and more agitated, joined by loud thuds, then screams.

Dirk crept down the hallway toward the source of the noise as the fight escalated. Upon reaching the door at the end, he hesitated. His resolve, fueled by the loss of AR, had begun to waver. Was it really worth it to barge into a fight with the Crew, all by himself?

At what sounded like a break in the action, Dirk steeled himself and reached for the doorknob, but recoiled when the noise resumed with a vengeance. This time, he recognized the voices of both his father and brother among the commotion. There was a loud crash, as if someone had smashed through a window. Then, relative silence, punctuated only by the occasional infuriated grumbling.

After a minute of listening hard for any additional sounds, Dirk finally opened the door, only to find the room as vacant as all the others were. However, unlike the other rooms, it looked like a disaster zone. The bookshelves had collapsed, the curtain rods had fallen, and the windowpane was completely gone except for a few shards around the frame. The wall on the right was also mostly missing, drywall debris strewn about the floor.

The hole in the wall was almost tall enough for Dirk to walk through without ducking. He carefully stepped around the debris into the next room as the grumbling continued. There, in a swivel chair by the far window, was slumped the leader of the Midnight Crew. The puppet and the shades both lay on the desk beside him.

Dirk felt fury flood back through his body at the sight of AR. "Spades Slick," he snarled, raising his sword.

Slick turned in his swivel chair to face Dirk, surprisingly calm for someone who looked as though he had been beaten within an inch of his life. "If it isn't the robot boy," he said. "As soon as your brother showed up, I figured you wouldn't be far behind."

"Tell me where my father and brother are if you value your limbs."

"They ran off, probably to that dump you call a house. Who cares."

Dirk startled a bit at the nonchalant response.

"Your daddy's more trouble than he's worth, and we were planning on clearing out soon anyway," Slick continued. "We've squeezed all we could from this rotten little town. I figured it's time to start fresh, maybe set up shop upriver."

"What are you talking about?"

"You'll find out soon enough. But that's not what you're really here for, is it? You want your weirdo robot shades."

"Yeah. And the puppet."

Slick laughed and picked up the puppet. "Seriously? This stupid thing? You got no taste, robot boy."

"Give them to me," Dirk said in the most commanding voice he could muster.

"You got a copy of yourself in here, don't you?" Slick said, examining the miniature circuitry in the shades. "Clubs gave me these back after five minutes, saying they're not worth the frustration." He tossed the shades and the puppet to Dirk, who nearly dropped them in surprise. "Take them. They will be your final possessions...the last things you will ever own."

"What?" Dirk asked as he put the shades back on. "What do you mean?"

Slick pointed to the window. "Look down there, stupid."

Dirk did so, and the sight that met his eyes completely drowned out the relief of saving the AR. The whole town was ablaze. Faintly visible through the smoke and the panicked townspeople were Hearts Boxcars, tossing huge tanks of kerosene on burning houses, Diamonds Droog, purposefully torching everything in his path with a flamethrower, and Clubs Deuce, capering about and tossing explosives into the abandoned market stalls.

"Moron," Slick muttered to himself. "C4 won't explode if it's just set on fire. He calls himself an expert."

Dirk was too stunned to move. He felt as though the whole world had evaporated, leaving only him and AR.  _ Get a grip, _ his father's voice whispered in his mind's ear.  _ Don't let him see he's gotten to you.  _ He closed his eyes. Inhaled. Exhaled. Then he turned his back on the window and the horrible view beyond, and ran.

"Go forth, robot boy. Be a hero!" Slick cackled behind him.

A quick glance told Dirk that he would not make the jump out of the broken window, even though his father may have. Instead, he ran back the way he came, out the front door, and along the Crew's trail of destruction.

Dirk sprinted through the burning town as fast as his legs could carry him, turning aside only once to grab Vriska out of a burning house.

"Return the puppet - whoa!" Vriska yelped, as the doorframe tumbled down to the spot where she was just standing.

"I will," Dirk said. "But first we gotta stop the Crew! Come on!"

They ran in silence. As they approached the apartment building, Dirk's niggling misgivings grew into an overwhelming sense that something was terribly wrong.

His fears were confirmed as they arrived at the building, panting and wheezing, only to find it already burning. Droog, Deuce, and Boxcars walked to one side of the building and the other, stoking the flames with long metal poles.

"Dirk!" called a faint voice from above.

He looked up. Dave was waving frantically through the window of the lobby.

"Dad and I managed to escape while you were at the mansion, but now we can't get out of the house!" Dave shouted, barely audible over the Crew and the roaring flames.

"That's kind of a you problem," Deuce yelled back, sticking a marshmallow at the end of his pole.

Dirk scanned the area. There had to be something there he could use. Some water, a tarp, something. Everything in the apartment was surely crisped by now. The only things Dirk had on him were his sword and the puppet. He desperately wanted nothing more than to go to town on the Crew, go absolutely HAM on the bastards destroying his home, but even if he succeeded against all three of them solo, he doubted he could do it quickly enough to save his family from the flames in time. He reached for his sword anyway.

His hand stopped mid-draw. Didn't he have another tool at his disposal? Something capable of paralyzing masses and summoning meteors? Wouldn't that be a better choice?

_ Since when do you ever act based on  _ feelings _ you get?  _ Dave's words echoed in his head.

Dirk was pretty sure the  _ feeling _ was not his own, that it was imposed upon him by some malevolent outsider, but he didn't have much of a choice.

"You said this thing was magic," Dirk said to Vriska, holding up the puppet. "How does it work?"

"You look into its eyes and the spirit takes hold," Vriska replied. "It takes control of your brain."

"You lost your mind in a cave," Dirk said, half to himself. His eyes were still fixed on the mobsters surrounding his house, backlit by the raging inferno.

"Well, then you just gotta trust me on this."

The flames reached the height of the third floor, licking dangerously around the broken windows. Deuce cheered as Boxcars threw another barrel of kerosene into the fire.

"You know what? I believe you." Dirk pushed his shades back onto his forehead and held the puppet's head in front of his face.

"You do?" Vriska asked incredulously. "Wait. No, don't -"

Vriska reached for the puppet, but it was too late. Dirk had already pried open its eyes.

For the second time that day, Dirk felt himself disconnect from reality. This time, though, it felt as though he was the one fading away, not the rest of the world.

A series of thoughts flew through Dirk's head the moment he made eye contact with the puppet. In order, they were:  _ Why are the puppet's eyes so weirdly realistic? _ Then,  _ they're glowing purple. The old lady was right after all _ . Finally,  _ HAIL THE ANGEL OF DOUBLE DEATH AND HIS TWIN MESSIAHS. _


	2. Dave the Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a boy gets his brother the heck out of dodge.

Vriska shook her head sadly as she watched Dirk's pupils glow in tandem with the puppet's, contrasting bizarrely with his amber irises. The purple glow continued to spread over his whole body in hazy spirals.

"I hear the call to service," whispered Dirk, with a strange combination of panic and exhilaration. He slung the puppet over his shoulder and tied its hands around his neck. "I accept my charge."

"Oh boy, here we go," Vriska groaned.

The purple glow billowed over the ground in a roiling mist, surrounding the building and engulfing the entire Crew. The flames turned purple, then faltered and died, and the heat rapidly subsided. For a single moment, the world was still.

Then a tremendous noise split the night, sending a shockwave out from the spot where Dirk stood. Vriska and the mobsters stumbled, clutching their ears, and the apartment building shook alarmingly. Dirk's sword exploded into shards.

"Careful, stupid!" Vriska shouted as she picked up Dirk's shades, which had fallen off in the ruckus. "Can't you release the Vast Honk literally anywhere else?"

The Striders clambered out of the lobby, coughing from the smoke and looking around in bewilderment. Then the noise sounded again, even louder this time, snapping branches off trees as far as the Crew's mansion. Dirk remained where he was, shocked to realize the sound was coming from his own mouth.

"Oh no, oh no," Vriska muttered. "That was definitely strong enough to tip the sarcophagus..." She cast a final concerned look at the power-mad teenager, then ran away to check on the plane. In a few minutes, either she would be able to put the sarcophagus back in its place, or she wouldn't be around to care.

Meanwhile, Droog had recovered enough to stand up. He barked an order at Boxcars and Deuce as he drew his pole like a weapon. Dirk Sr had realized he was still down a sword, so he prepared to defend with nothing but his fists. However, before he had a chance to do so, Dirk Jr pushed past him.

"It seems you have got your mad hostility on for my closest of kin, and that we cannot abide," Dirk declared.

"What the hell are you doing?" Dave hissed.

"If you are to join us faithful in the service of the Angel of Double Death, you'll need to be more sparing in your dealing of  _ regular _ death."

"Dirk, stop trying to talk them down," said Dirk Sr, not lowering his fists. "These men are professionals."

"But I am willing to forgive, provided you have what it takes to survive your initiations!" Dirk pointed a finger at the mobsters, sending a plume of purple mist curling toward them. As soon as the mist touched them, they stopped in their tracks and their faces went slack. The poles fell to the ground with a clatter.

"Now dance for us!" Dirk ordered.

The Striders watched in silent horror as the mobsters complied, jerkily moving their bodies in a comical dance made macabre by their blank expressions. Dirk laughed and clapped his hands like a child.

Across the town, Vriska slid down into the cave and hobbled to the ancient plane to confirm her fears. She gasped in horror as she took in the scene - the plane completely disintegrated, the sarcophagus wide open on the floor - for the split second before the whole cave burst into sound and light.

As the mind-controlled mobsters danced before him, Dirk suddenly got the feeling that something terrible had happened. Also, that something wonderful had happened. The contradictory emotions spun in his head, clanging into each other like parts in a faulty motor. He released his grip on the mobsters’ minds, letting them collapse on the floor in a heap, and turned around.

A point of light had appeared on the horizon, flashing every color of the rainbow and steadily increasing in intensity.

Almost too late, Dirk comprehended what he had done. He shoved his family back into the ruined apartment building and tackled them to the ground. A shining white dome formed around them and the prone bodies of the mobsters.

Not a second later, a deafening blast of sound hit the dome like a missile, even louder than the Vast Honk. A spiderweb of lavender cracks formed on the side of the dome, alternately growing and shrinking as Dirk repaired the cracks almost as fast as they appeared.

The blast only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. As soon as it stopped, the cracks overwhelmed the dome and broke it apart.

Dirk stood, and the last of the dome disintegrated. The entire building above the lobby had collapsed around them. Only a few girders remained upright, twisted and smoking. Roxanne peered around at the wreckage.

"What on earth did this?" she asked, bewildered.

"I did this," Dirk answered.

"It can't be. I raised you better than that!"

"No, it's true. I did it all." Dirk laughed, a harsh, deranged bark that echoed through the devastated lobby. "I put out the fire, but I also freed my master from the sarcophagus...the puppet compels me to turn the whole world into a shrine in his honor!" His voice rose to a shriek, and he laughed again. Multicolored sparks shot out of his fingertips in all directions.

Roxanne gasped and hugged Dave tightly. Dirk Sr's arm twitched, as if he wanted to draw his sword. What struck Dirk most, however, was the look on his brother's face. Dave was never very good at hiding his emotions, even with the help of his shades, but Dirk had never seen such open terror on his face in his life.

_ USE THEIR FEAR _ , said the invading voice in Dirk's head.

Dirk gathered the last of his rapidly evaporating sanity and spoke as calmly as he could.

"I'm sorry. Mom, Dad, Dave, you need to get out of here. I'm too dangerous to be around." Dirk pointed past the wreckage of the apartment building, away from where the town used to be.

"Dirk, what -"

"LEAVE ME!"

Dave turned and ran, his parents close behind. Dirk watched as his family disappeared into the forest. As soon as they were out of sight, Dirk sank to his knees, and for the first time in years, let himself break into sobs.

~

“So...” Dave looked around the bubble. It was empty except for the winged, vaguely girl-shaped red blob that was Aradia. “Where’s my brother?”

“Oh, when he wished Lord English never existed, he created a paradox, which created an alternate timeline,” said Aradia. “He got transported to that alternate timeline just now, but from his perspective, he’d always lived there. That’s his reality now.”

“Uh.”

“We can watch him on my fenestrated wall!” A darkened window appeared on the wall of the bubble with a snap of Aradia's incorporeal fingers. She floated merrily to the window and poked at it until it flickered to life. A familiar boy’s face, framed by brown chin-length hair, appeared on the screen. His eyes were covered by pointed sunglasses.

Dave squinted at the window. “Is that Dirk? It’s been so long since I’ve seen him with his hair like that. Does that reality not have gel or bleach? That’s a goddamn travesty.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes even a well-intentioned wish can lead to travesties. But you know what? You get a wish too!”

“Really?”

“Yup!” Aradia summoned a remote control from thin air into her hand and muted the audio feed from the window. “Anything you want.”

“If I make a wish,” said Dave, "it needs to be something that wouldn't have awful repercussions like Dirk's wish…" He paused to think. "What would you say if I just asked for some AJ? I’m phrasing it that way so that it won’t count as my wish, just in case.”

Aradia frowned. “Apple juice?”

“Yeah. The beverage of the gods. Not from concentrate, preferably, but whatever you got around would do the trick just as well.”

“Dave, I can just alchemize some for you. Don’t waste your one wish on apple juice. Use it for something important, you know, maybe on someone who needs it.”

Dave raised an eyebrow.

“Him. Over there.” Aradia nodded her head at the window.

Dave shrugged. “Nah,” he said. “If anyone can figure out what to do, it’s Dirk. Let’s just see how this plays out, then maybe we can see where we stand. It's his wish, after all. I'll hang on to mine for now.”

"A wise choice," said Aradia. "You have no idea how many mortals struggle and quest their whole lives to get here to my Time Bubble, and then waste it all on a hasty wish. Anyway, if you're going to be here a while longer, we might as well do something. Chill out, have a good time."

"A good time, you say?"

Aradia pointed at the floor between them. A small console with two controllers appeared, along with plentiful pillows and snacks. "How do you feel about games?" she asked.

Dave grinned. "I like the way you think, Aradia."

~

With his family gone, safe from the demon's machinations for the time being, Dirk turned his attention to the Midnight Crew. The bodies of Diamonds Droog, Hearts Boxcars, and Clubs Deuce were strewn about him, still unconscious after Dirk had abruptly withdrawn his control.

"Now comes the second phase - the test of faith. Rise, my ninjas," Dirk commanded. The mobsters' eyes flew open, their minds returned to them.

"Deuce?" Boxcars said groggily.

"Boxcars!" Deuce tried to stand up, but his shoes were still covered in purple mist. "I can't feel my legs!"

"Fear not!" Dirk proclaimed. "For I have brought you forth into a new life...into the Messianic age!"

"Huh? The Strider boy?"

"Hey, Boxcars! Get me out of this stuff, will ya?"

Boxcars crawled over to Deuce and pulled him out of the puddle of purple mist. "Where's the boss?" he asked.

"Beats me."

"He's still at the mansion," Droog said gruffly, sitting on the ground a few yards away. He was covered in purple mist from the neck down.

Boxcars and Deuce rushed over and began tugging on Droog's limbs in an attempt to free him, taking turns pausing to rub the feeling back into their arms.

"Come back!" Dirk called. "Only we can protect you!" He placed both his hands on the ground, sending more purple mist across the ground in all directions.

Boxcars cried out in terror as the mist crept up his leg, immobilizing it.

"Stay," Dirk pleaded. "Can't you hear the whispers?"

"Forget Droog! Let's get out of here!" Deuce shouted, as Boxcars tugged his leg free.

Dirk let out a shaky sigh, then turned to Droog, who was still covered in purple mist.

"So much for a fresh start," Droog said, watching the remainder of the Crew vanish over the horizon.

Dirk leaned against Droog's back, gazing into the distance where the town used to be. "The voices tell me to spread the wicked word over the whole world," he said.

"Remove your hands from my person, or I will remove them from yours."

"I am the beginning and the end," Dirk continued as if Droog hadn't said anything. "I am the hand of madness."

An eerie green glow at the corner of Dirk's vision startled him from his reverie. He got up and followed it through the broken streets toward the cave, leaving Droog behind.

~

“Your view of death is pretty bleak,” Aradia told Dave around a mouthful of pretzels. “You seem to think that when a mortal dies, that spells the end for both them and everyone still alive who was connected to them. In reality, that connection is never severed.”

“Man, that’s deep,” said Dave, sipping from his fourth bottle of apple juice. “But a little too metaphorical for me. It’s not like I’m ever going to actually talk to Darkleer again, now that English got him, or meet my Grandpa Harley’s ghost.”

Aradia tilted her head, musing. “The dead do continue to exist...just in other realms, or states of being. They become ghosts, or gods, or the interactions between elementary particles. I’m even friends with some of them, since I help the souls who passed come to terms with their respective afterlives.”

"Heyyyy, Aradia," a bright feminine voice called from above, as if on cue. "I brought some board games! I got Battleship, Monopoly...wait, what's a mortal doing in this realm?"

Dave and Aradia looked up. At the top of the bubble sat a short, round woman, skin black as the night sky and sparkling with miniature stars. Instead of hair, she had long, twisting tentacles that shone pink as they floated in a non-existent current.

"Is that the Cosmic Cuttlefish?" Dave whispered.

"He's just here making a wish, Feferi," Aradia assured the Cuttlefish.

"But we were gonna hang!" the Cuttlefish pouted.

"Later. Come on down and meet Dave the Human."

"All right," said the Cuttlefish, not entirely pacified. She floated down to sit next to Aradia, her tentacles billowing around her face.

~

The mouth of the cave was gone, blasted into a crater by the demon's spirit, the ground covered with charred gravel. Strewn about were larger pieces of debris, recognizable as pieces of rock and metal. Dirk passed them by, picking his way toward the green glow.

The source of the glow was a pool of viscous green liquid in the center of the crater. Pieces of the airplane floated on the surface, the green glow giving the rust a sickly pallor. A curious black shape spun in a slow eddy, half-submerged near the center of the pool. Dirk bent over to get a closer look. A ripple moved through the pool, revealing more of the shape. It was, in fact, two shapes, a pair of symmetrical triangles connected at a point.

"AR?" Dirk wondered aloud. "How did you get way out here?"

The shades continued to float lazily, the red lights in the lenses flickering. A moment later, a face broke the surface behind them and rose out of the pool, gasping for breath. A pair of arms followed, groping wildly for the edge of the pool, splashing green goop in all directions. A few drops landed on the sparse grass. Vines sprouted from the spots where the goop landed, grew poisonously bright flowers, then faded to dust over the course of seconds.

Dirk carefully crept closer to the edge of the pool, then jumped as one of the arms reached out and grabbed him. He backpedaled, dragging the figure out of the pool, then realized he was attempting to speak.

"Dirk..." the figure mumbled into the dirt.

"Huh?" Dirk said, leaning towards him. "Did you say my name?"

The figure raised his head, and Dirk found himself staring into his own face. His skin was pale as porcelain and traced all over with red lines that resembled circuitry, and his hair was just as pale as his face and slicked back into spikes like his father's. Still, it was unmistakably a copy of Dirk's face, shades and all, and it was twisted in pain.

"Dirk," he said again. It seemed to take enormous effort.

"Don't worry, AR," said Dirk softly. "I will share the plans for the Dark Carnival with you. You shall be my first true disciple - not like those fickle heretics in their stiff suits who all up and turned their backs on us the moment I loosed their minds..."

~

The ghastly spectacle that Dirk's life had become continued to play out soundlessly through the window, though its audience had long since lost interest.

"So can you really make up a rap about anything?" Feferi asked in wonderment.

"Sure," Dave replied with a shrug, leaning slightly away from Feferi's wide, strange W-shaped eyes. "Just give me any topic and a beat, and I'll freestyle the freshest lyrics you've ever heard. One hundred percent preservative free, and that's a Dave the Human guarantee. Batteries not included."

Aradia nudged Feferi in the ribs. "Oh yeah?" she said. "Bet you can't beat the pair of us at a competitive slam. Feferi and I, we're the best slammers in the multiverse."

"What, for real? Sick!"

"She's joking, Dave," said Feferi. "We can't rap for the life of us."

"I really do like slam poetry, I'm just not very good at it," Aradia was quick to remark upon seeing Dave's disappointed expression. "I can beatbox, though."

"Awesome," said Dave, perking up. "Lay down a beat for me."

Aradia did so, and Dave cleared his throat. " _ We're three cool friends, playing games/We all know each other's names/I like it here, it's all right/but the yellow is a little too bright! _ " Dave joined Aradia's beatboxing for a few bars, then shook his head. "Not really my best work," he said. "I'm not really in the creative mindset right now. My brain just wants to shut down after the crazy day I had. Don't tell Dirk I said that. He would never be caught dead not ready to blow someone's mind with his lyric genius."

"That's all right," said Feferi. "I thought it was lovely. Hey Aradia, can you pass the chips?"

"Sure," said Aradia, already reaching for the bag. "Let me just - whoops." As she took the bag, her hand brushed against the remote and unmuted the window. The ominous scene playing out behind them could no longer be ignored.

~

"Um...AR?" Dirk backed away from AR's clawing hands. "What - what are you doing?"

The AR crawled toward Dirk, repeating his name over and over between cries of pain.

"Back off my master's vessel, AR! I'm warning you!" shouted Dirk in a voice that was not his own, still inching backwards.

AR stopped in his tracks, seized by a fit of convulsions. As Dirk watched, the skin on AR's face split along the red lines, revealing a green skull underneath. His screams deepened to monstrous roars, and he rose back to his feet. The lights in the lenses of his shades were no longer red, but flashed every color of the rainbow.

Whatever this creature was, it was definitely no longer the Auto-Responder. 

~

The three occupants of the bubble watched in trepidation as the alternate versions of Dirk and Hal in the window faced off. Hal opened his mouth - well, it seemed to be Lord English’s mouth - but before he could move or say anything, Dirk blasted him with some kind of purple energy. As soon as the attack connected, the image and sound from the window dissolved into static.

"Well, that sure was a thing that happened," Aradia said at length. "Their interaction may eventually cause some problems for the structure of the multiverse."

Dave and Feferi stared at the window, both open-mouthed in shock.

"Would you like to use your wish now, Dave?" Aradia said softly.

“I wish for my brother to be okay!” Dave pointed at the window. "Please, Aradia, you have to fix this!"

“Wait! Wait!” Aradia shouted. “Dave, I like you, so you should know that Paradox Space always likes to give my wishes an ironic twist. Like a treebeast's frond kind of deal.”

“A tree...what?”

"Just be really specific with your phrasing," she explained. "There are rules to this stuff. Say you wish for a back rub. Who's going to give it to you? A dirty old man? An angry cholerbear? Am I zapping some guy away from his dinner, leaving his kids traumatized?" Aradia cleared her throat and began imitating the voice of a young child. "Mommy, where did Daddy go? He just disappeared from the nutrition block...heh, I don't know," she continued, dropping the impression. "I don't understand your human relationships. But you get the idea."

Dave wasn't sure when his head started to hurt. Aradia's voice crept into his ears and around the back of his skull until it was all he could sense around him. He felt sick.

"Any paradox caused by your wish - and a wish made here, by definition, will cause at least one -  _ will _ change elements of history, both before and after the point in time it affects. Memories changed. People erased from existence. Potential worlds evaporated. All because of  _ your _ wish. Take exceeding care, Dave."

Dave didn't answer, as his mind had performed an acrobatic pirouette out of awareness.

~

"Uggghhh..." Dave groaned, trying and failing to open his eyes. "What happened?"

"You just blacked out a bit," said Aradia's voice, soft with concern. "I'm sorry. It's a lot of responsibility to throw on you all at once."

Dave finally managed to crack one eye open. The yellow light of the bubble was painfully bright at first, but as his eyes adjusted, he caught sight of Aradia's ethereal form floating on one side of him and Feferi's tentacles on the other. He sat up and tried to stand, but he was still too lightheaded to do so.

"Here," Aradia said. "Drink something. Take it easy."

A bottle of apple juice materialized in front of Dave. He took it and drank half in one gulp. "Thanks, Aradia," he said hoarsely. "You're the actual best." 

Aradia nodded absently. "I know a way that you can bring back life on Earth and get yourself and Dirk home," she said. "But I can't just tell you. I have a sort of cosmic NDA kind of situation, and causal spoilers are strictly forbidden, even in context of a wish."

"I think I know a way too," said Dave. "It's got to be some kind of ludicrously OP meta-wish that can affect..." A realization dawned upon him. "...someone else's wishes. Can I do that? Is that allowed?"

Aradia grinned enigmatically and shrugged.

"Great. Give me a minute to think. My brain is still running its startup diagnostics. Give a guy some warning before dropping all this pressure on him, will ya?" Dave continued to ramble, half to himself, as he paced back and forth between Aradia and the window.

Several minutes later, he stopped abruptly. "Got it," he said.

"Go for it."

“I wish...that Lord English wished...for me -”

Aradia opened her mouth as if to say something.

“-  _ and Dirk _ -”

Aradia smiled and closed her mouth.

“- to go back home!”

A pause.

"Yeah," Aradia said with a nod. "I can work with that. 'Kay, this has been fun..." Her grin widened. "See ya."

Aradia, Feferi, the window, and the bubble all disappeared in a flash of light.

A moment later, Dave found himself outside the bubble, Dirk's arm around him as they fell through the surface, just as they had mere hours before. The brothers emerged near the top of the bubble, looking down at Aradia and the massive, hulking form of Lord English.

"I wish," Lord English growled in his fearsome voice, “for the extinction of all li-i-i-i-”

A second passed.

There was a strange noise, like a record scratching, and Lord English spoke again.

“...for Dirk and Dave to go back home."

Another second passed.

"Wait!" Lord English shouted when he realized what he had said. "I don't wish for that!"

"Sorry," said Aradia. "You only get one wish. Hey, Dave?" Aradia glanced up at him. "See that? Treebeast's frond."

Once again, the bubble disappeared.

~

"Dirk! Dave!"

A woman’s voice was the only sound that could be heard in the cool evening other than the chirping crickets.

Dave looked around. He and Dirk were sitting on the grass just outside the walls of the Pastry Kingdom. Princess Jujube, still dressed in her nightgown, was running toward them. A small pile of jewels lay on the ground nearby, surrounded by the ashes of RL's Tome. Everything was as it was just before Lord English opened the portal to the Time Bubble.

"It worked," Dave said to himself in disbelief.

"Dave?" Dirk sat up and looked around. "What's going on? Why would Lord English wish -"

"It worked!" Dave said again, wrapping Dirk in a tight hug.

"Dave! I'm serious!" Dirk shouted, trying to wriggle free. "Something really messed up is happening!"

"It already happened, and it never happened!" Dave laughed, not letting go of Dirk.

"What? What happened?" Princess Jujube asked.

"Nothing! Because I saved everybody." Dave didn't care that he wasn't making sense. He didn’t even care that Lord English, wearing Darkleer’s body, was potentially loose in the multiverse. His brother was safe, his world was safe, and that was all that mattered.

As Dirk extricated himself from Dave’s embrace, the jewels rattled in the grass, then levitated and scattered over the horizon in all directions. All around the continent, royalty felt sudden jolts in their heads as their crown jewels returned to their settings.

There was a faint glow from a nearby clearing, accompanied by a small pop.

"Did you hear that?" Dirk asked nervously.

He stood and walked to the clearing, Dave at his heels. In the grass lay a pristine twelve-pack of apple juice bottles with a note taped to the top.

_ If you want to come back and hang out again sometime, call me :) _

_ -A. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not done with this AU. Stay tuned for more stuff.


End file.
